{"id":33285,"date":"2013-10-30T14:25:35","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T14:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=68c8bebeca3ad743546aaaafc925c4ac"},"modified":"2013-10-30T14:25:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T14:25:35","slug":"speech-armed-forces-charities-reception-david-camerons-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=33285","title":{"rendered":"Speech: Armed Forces charities reception: David Cameron’s speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Read more about the annual Armed Forces charities reception.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Prime Minister<\/h2>\n

Good evening everyone. A very warm welcome to everybody here. I have lots of parties and receptions and events here in this room. Just today I had the president of Afghanistan and Prime Minister of Pakistan here. But I\u2019ve got to say to you, there are very few meetings that give me greater pleasure than having in this wonderful room so many brilliant charities that look after our armed forces, that look after veterans, that look after widows, that look after people who have served in our armed forces. So it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome you all here tonight.<\/p>\n

Tonight is an important night, and I hope \u2013 this is the first time we\u2019ve brought together as many military charities as we could in one place. And I hope we\u2019ll make it an annual event, because I think it\u2019s really important, first of all, to thank you for the incredible work that you do. When I became prime minister, I could see perfectly well that we have been asking our military in this country to do more and more, to work harder and harder. We\u2019ve had people deployed to Iraq, to Afghanistan; I frequently meet people who are on their third or even on their fourth tour. We\u2019ve asked our armed services to do an immense amount. They have made extraordinary sacrifices; their families have made extraordinary sacrifices. I see that as a constituency MP, with RAF Brize Norton in my constituency \u2013 so many families affected by deployment after deployment. And what I sense is that, not just that the government should be doing more, but the whole country should be doing more and, crucially, the whole country wants to do more. And that\u2019s what I want to just say a word about tonight.<\/p>\n

Government, I think, is starting to play its proper role. We put in place the Military Covenant; we\u2019ve put it into law. I think that was an important step forward. We set up the Covenant Reference Group, bringing together ministers from all the departments which can affect service personnel\u2019s lives \u2013 so, the Home Office, the Health Department, the Education Department \u2013 all sitting round the table, in the Cabinet Room, chaired by Oliver Letwin, one of the most senior ministers in the government – I chaired the inaugural meeting – looking at all the things we can do to make sure the Armed Forces Covenant really means something in the lives of our service families. <\/p>\n

But it isn\u2019t just about government. As I said, it\u2019s about what the country wants to do in terms of doing even more to support armed service personnel, veterans and families. And that\u2019s why it\u2019s been so good to see this covenant roll out across our country. We see the Civic Covenant, where local authority after local authority has signed up and said it will do more to help veterans\u2019 and forces\u2019 families. Tonight we\u2019ve got the Corporate Covenant \u2013 some of the first companies to sign up and say what they want to do. So, some of the ones I\u2019ve just been meeting, like National Express, saying they\u2019re going to try and employ more ex-service personnel, that they\u2019re going to give people transport reduction \u2013 I\u2019m sure that will be very welcome to people. Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, took an important step in terms of bus travel for veterans.<\/p>\n

So what I see is a sense that government, yes, needs to do more, and is. But also the whole country wants to do more. We see that in local government; we see it in business; we see it in the donations that your charities receive. So I hope you can see, for the first time in a long time, a more joined-up approach to the needs of service personnel and families. <\/p>\n

But the crucial thing is that it\u2019s not just a joined-up approach; there is now some proper money involved. And I hope that there are lots of people tonight who\u2019ve seen the benefits of that. And here I want to thank someone who doesn\u2019t get thanked very often in Number 10 Downing Street, or, or indeed anywhere else, and that is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Because he has done a truly wonderful thing, which is, he has taken the money from the Libor fines, where banks and others had behaved badly, and he has taken that money, and he hasn\u2019t taken a Treasury skim off the top \u2013 he hasn\u2019t taken a \u2018top slice\u2019, as we like to say in Whitehall \u2013 he has given every penny piece of that money to the great charities, voluntary bodies and organisations, some of whom are here tonight. <\/p>\n

So far that has been \u00a335 million of money \u2013 real money \u2013 into armed forces charities. Tonight I can announce how \u00a39 million is going to be spent. But the really exciting thing I can announce tonight is that, while I can\u2019t guarantee that this bad behaviour that has been punished and fines will continue \u2013 and I very much hope it won\u2019t continue \u2013 what I can guarantee is that you\u2019ve had the \u00a335 million, but from 2015 there will be \u00a310 million available for this community scheme, so we can go on doing the right thing by our military veterans and forces charities. I think that puts some proper money behind what I think is now a joined-up approach. As the Chancellor himself put it, what we have done is taken the money from some people who demonstrated the worst of values, and we have given that money to organisations like yours, and to people who\u2019ve served in our Armed Forces, who have shown the very best of British values.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m really proud that we\u2019re able to do that. It\u2019s frankly the least that all of you deserve for the amazing work that you do. So, above all, the message from me tonight is a very big thank you for the work you do; a plea to go on doing the incredible work you do; and a plea to go on being what you are, which is amazingly inventive and creative about how to help families, about how to help widows, about how to help bring people together. Because what struck me when I looked at the list of organisations here tonight, is it hasn\u2019t just got the longstanding charities that have done so much amazing work over the years; we\u2019ve also got some incredible entrepreneurs, some incredible thinkers and dreamers who\u2019ve come up with amazing schemes to help our brave armed service personnel. So an enormously warm welcome, a very big thank you; keep doing what you\u2019re doing; frankly, you are the best of British, and you deserve that Libor money. Thank you very much indeed.<\/p>\n

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Sign up for regular email updates from the Prime Minister\u2019s Office.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prime Minister David Cameron spoke at the first annual Armed Forces charities reception at 10 Downing Street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}